Selena Gomez’s ‘Bad Liar’ Is Not About Justin Bieber, Songwriter Confirms — It’s About The Weeknd

Selena Gomez’s “Bad Liar” is not about Justin Bieber. Although it’s easy to think that the song is about an ex who lied, the song is also about someone new in her life.

That was confirmed by the person who wrote “Bad Liar,” songwriter Justin Tranter. He recently tweeted what the song is really about, in response to a tweet which claimed that the song was about an ex. He corrected them about that assumption.

“You got some of the lyrics wrong, and it’s actually about trying to hide magic feelings for someone new, but not being able to. Xo,” he tweeted.

“Bad Liar” is actually a pretty mature departure from Selena’s regular brand of generic pop music. As Spin notes about the new song, Selena sings over a bass line sample of “Psycho Killer” by Talking Heads.

“Selena and Julia are Talking Heads-obsessed,” Tranter said to Variety. “So when we all got together in one room, Julia suggested, ‘Why don’t we just write over the bass line from ‘Psycho Killer?’ and we were all going, ‘That sounds great!'”

“The beat was just very minimal and left plenty of room for the top line to grow,” he says in the interview with Variety. “It was like a starting place, then it just felt so good, it became the thing.”

The members of Talking Heads also seem to approve of the sample, at least David Byrne did, according to Justin Tranter.

“He heard it, loved it and approved it,” Tranter said. “Which was a pretty crazy moment for us. To have David Byrne listed next to our names is just so cool.”

Tranter, who worked on Selena’s last album, Revival, also dropped some insight about the direction of Selena Gomez’s new album.

“Selena is where she always is, ahead of the f—ing curve… The music is very sexy, very smart and right where we left off the last time.”